No. 3: Institutional quality custody solutions could come to market soon: There is an urgent need for qualified custodians to safeguard the growing amount of crypto assets. Very few crypto custodians meet the strict security requirements demanded by regulators and institutional investors. Coinbase, one of the more popular exchanges, has launched custody services by partnering with Electronic Transaction Clearing (ETC), a regulated broker-dealer. ItBit and Xapo have also begun to offer similar services and we expect more to follow.
Some bitcoin exchanges allow account holders to short — bet that bitcoin will fall in value — but the ordinary investor cannot do this as easily with bitcoin as with stocks or exchange-traded funds. Shorting is easy on the futures markets, however, as the trader simply buys a contract to sell a block of bitcoin at today's price sometime in the future. If it works out the price will fall and the bet will pay the difference.
These characteristics make Bitcoin fundamentally different from a fiat currency, which is backed by the full faith and credit of its government. Fiat currency issuance is a highly centralized activity supervised by a nation’s central bank. While the bank regulates the amount of currency issued in accordance with its monetary policy objectives, there is theoretically no upper limit to the amount of such currency issuance. In addition, local currency deposits are generally insured against bank failures by a government body. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has no such support mechanisms. The value of a Bitcoin is wholly dependent on what investors are willing to pay for it at a point in time. As well, if a Bitcoin exchange folds up, clients with Bitcoin balances have no recourse to get them back.

UK-based cryptocurrency trading startup, Crypto Facilities, has become the first crypto platform to launch regulated Ethereum futures contracts, making a new derivatives contract available from 4 pm UK time on the 11th of May. The new Ethereum futures contracts represent another step toward the maturation of the cryptocurrency market as complex financial products such as index funds and crypto ETFs loom on the horizon.

It’s a social platform for traders to monetize their knowledge/advice and creates an all in one platform for trading. The team is very professional and they provide regular updates on Reddit and Medium – development work on the platform is done on daily basis. 2018 is planned for marketing and that should see the price rocket. They also need to be listed on some bigger exchange (right now on Cryptopia) as they barely missed the boat to be listed on Binance.
While the number of merchants who accept cryptocurrencies has steadily increased, they are still very much in the minority. For cryptocurrencies to become more widely used, they have to first gain widespread acceptance among consumers. However, their relative complexity compared to conventional currencies will likely deter most people, except for the technologically adept.
Steindorff: Investment assessments for established and emerging projects are conducted to ensure each project’s team and underlying technology fit within the guidelines of our general thesis and pass our initial set of criteria to weed out superficial, low growth and fraudulent offerings. Upon approval, our researchers collect, review and analyze all relative qualitative and quantitative data pertaining to the project’s team, thesis, code, security, vision, momentum, partners, roadmap, operations, structure, geographics, cryptography, incentive design, applications, utility, compliance, industry specifics, token mechanics, economics, competition and growth potential. You have to remember there is no P&L, there is no way to calculate a present value of future cash flows for a protocol. Since many of these projects are essentially developer tools at this point we think some of the strongest signals come from tracking engagement and involvement on Github and the strength and passion of the developer community around a project.
In the year 2018, we’ll see these aspects and more flourish. Imagine all of the industries in the world and imagine if each industry had a cryptocurrency backing it. Bitcoin is a very generic coin used in anonymous wealth transfer. We’ll see fewer of these generic coins come to exist; we’ll start to see very creative and ingenious applications of specific technology in very specific industries.
Hi, unfortunately I bought bitcoin at the peak, then it fell all the way down before I switched over to some of the Altcoins you mentioned, however I didn’t realise the time I switched over to them, that the Altcoins were at a peak and when I switched they then fell down too leading to more of a loss. I also, feel a lot of those coins have maybe had their days of 100x, 10x their gains and had more potential at the time you bought into them.
Finally, my personal preference is to avoid keeping all my eggs in one basket. Despite the fact that a hardware wallet like Trezor is technically one of the most secure options for keeping your coins safe with a fair amount of redundancy in recovery options, the fact remains that one day I might somehow lose access to my coins held within Trezor. I might suffer a concussion, for instance, that causes me to forget the password or the PIN required to access the Trezor, or perhaps I lose my Trezor and am unable to locate or decipher my recovery seed.
OmiseGO (OMG) is a public financial technology that’s based on Ethereum. The concept of OMG is to enable peer-to-peer value exchange and payment service in real time across not only decentralized currencies but fiat money as well. OmiseGO allows anyone on its network to process financial transactions (payrolls, B2B, remittances, payments, etc.) in a much more inexpensive and decentralized manner.
You will notice that many crypto exchanges will have differing buy/sell rates. I’ve noticed that sometimes the price even differs by $1000 or more, especially between the exchanges of different countries. This is because the price is determined by whatever the buyers and sellers are willing to pay on that exchange. This means that theoretically, you could purchase bitcoin from one exchange and sell it in another where it’s listed for higher. I’m still looking into this myself, but it seems that with the fees, limits and exchange times associated with each exchange it may not be as worthwhile as it seems.
Choose trusted wallets and exchanges. The hype surrounding the cryptocurrency market has led many people to jump in headfirst without checking whether they are doing business with reputable sources. As the market starts to settle in the coming years, it’s likely that up to 80% of the wallets and exchanges currently in business will disappear. Don’t make an already risky market worse by choosing an untrusted wallet or exchange.

*An accredited investor, in the context of a natural person, includes anyone who either earned income that exceeded $200,000 (or $300,000 together with a spouse) in each of the prior two years, and reasonably expects the same for the current year, OR, has a net worth over $1 million, either alone or together with a spouse (excluding the value of the person’s primary residence).

This option is most similar to using a credit card but without the associated risks of interest rates. You can use a standard debit card that is connected to your checking account, or you can buy a prepaid card. Using a debit card is widely accepted on most exchanges and instantly transfers, meaning you won’t have to worry about Bitcoin prices fluctuating before the transfer is complete.
NOTE: The image below shows daily candles on a 1 year BTC chart. When the short term 12 day exponential moving average crossed under the longer term 26 day in January 2018, it pretty clearly marked the start of a bear market in retrospect (a true correction, not just “a dip”). You can see that buying the dip and holding in this time was not ideal (not the worst move perhaps long term, and not a bad move for short term trades, just not ideal for a buy and hold strategy as far as we know so far). That overarching bear market is an example of a market in which one has to apply a bit more nuance to their “buy the dips” strategy.
This is an extraordinarily difficult feat to accomplish, however, as the more people there are mining bitcoin, the harder it is to take over the network. At the current worldwide mining rate of almost 5 billion gigahashes a second, it would be extraordinarily difficult for even the most powerful organizations in the world (e.g., large-scale governments) to mount a successful 51% attack. It would be enormously costly, and quite possibly more financially detrimental to the attacker than to the network.

Avoid borrowing money. One of the drawbacks when credit cards were the most popular way to pay for Bitcoin was the concept of borrowing money on such an unpredictable investment. When you borrow money that requires you to pay interest (credit cards and personal loans, for example), you risk having to pay extra for an investment that doesn’t give you a return, which exponentially increases your risk.

If you invest a high percentage of our Total Net Wealth into cryptocurrencies, then you are exceptionally exposed to the ups and downs of the cryptocurrency market. This is not only potentially stressful, but could severely damage your Total Net Wealth and have an impact on your personal life. It’s all about balancing risk, whilst maximising the potential for gains.
It’s important to realise that you need to do your own research and come up with your own strategy for cryptocurrency trading. If you are short on time and want to play it safe; the easiest cause of action is to simply diversify into several different coins and then wait a year or more. However, if you want to maximise profits you should learn how to swing trade cryptocurrency.
Most traders use a combination of the two but will tend to give weight towards one over the other. Chris Burniske, author of Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond, covered this recently on Twitter, explaining that it is essential that you understand what kind of strategy is right for you. He shared a link from Investopedia, outlining the difference.

I wrote about this on my blog. The market is only nine years old, and thus, the Crypto asset class is extremely new, and while these assets have been traded for a few years now, market conditions are continually changing. Unlike the stock market, we do not have decades of trading data to guide us. What worked a year ago might not work today, even things which worked three months ago might not work now. As new investors come into the market and liquidity improves, trading patterns are not always consistent. We must accept that nobody knows that the fuck will happen, and anyone who says so is purely speculating, and as such, it is essential that all ‘expert’ advice is taken with a pinch of salt.

Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party.
Becoming a beginner, remember that the cryptocurrency share in your portfolio cannot exceed 1%. Do not exceed the level you can afford. What is the amount of investment can not exceed the loss you can afford, for example, just as you wake up the next day and find that your entire cryptocurrency investment is plummeting, you will still feel that your economic situation is not bad. Of course, you still feel heartache, but this kind of blow is not too bad for you.

Futures are financial contracts obligating the buyer to purchase an asset or the seller to sell an asset, such as a physical commodity or a financial instrument, at a predetermined future date and price. Futures contracts detail the quality and quantity of the underlying asset; they are standardized to facilitate trading on a futures exchange. Some futures contracts may call for physical delivery of the asset, while others are settled in cash.

Psychologically, if it’s helpful, I think it may be fine to sell off some small portion of your upside if you do realize upside over time, in order to recoup your initially invested principal. I don’t think that this is necessarily the most optimal actual move to make, but do think it likely makes a huge difference psychologically, such that it makes it far easier for you to hold your remaining investment with sangfroid in the case that it ends up cratering sometime in the future.
We believe innovation in open source protocols will be faster and more like an evolutionary system, as developers fork, combine and extend protocol code with minimal friction. In fact, we believe forking will be continuous and native to this process and believe it is a net positive for the industry, though it does introduce complexities for investors.
It was at this time, incidentally, that Coinbase, became worried about stagnant growth of their user base, and decided to offer a truly astounding proposition. They offered to pay anyone who referred a new customer to Coinbase $75 if the new customer purchased just $100 in bitcoin. Coinbase took a 1% transaction fee at the time, meaning that for every $100 in bitcoin a person purchased, Coinbase charged $1. In short, Coinbase would pay out $75 for every $1 a new customer paid them.

Litecoin was developed in 2011. While it has faltered of late in value with the other cryptocurrencies, if it gains back that value, it will be because of its strengths in comparison to bitcoin: Significantly faster transaction time (one major complaint when bitcoin exploded was that the increase in users slowed down transactions tremendously) and a larger number of crypto tokens.

When I first started taking an interest in cryptocurrency I thought I was so lost in this huge sea of unknowns. Where do I start? What are the useful keywords to look up and keep in mind? What are the available helpful resources? This cryptocurrency investing guide is written so that in just 20 minutes, you would have a sense of what to expect of your upcoming crypto journey, and how to best go about starting it. Enjoy it, it might just be the most exhilarating ride of your life.

Generally speaking, diversification -- the ability for investors to buy stocks in different industries and sectors, or based on market cap, growth rate, or dividend yield -- has allowed investors the opportunity to maximize their long-term capital appreciation potential. If one sector is doing poorly, a diversified portfolio might be hedged with another industry or sector that's thriving. Plus, with the ability to load a diversified portfolio with dividend-paying stocks, complete with reinvestment, it's often easy to build wealth over time. All it really takes is patience, discipline, and the resolve to buy stocks at regular intervals over time, regardless of how "high" or "low" the market is trading.

Hey RV, could we maybe do a bit more of a technical/tradable look at crypto next? This along with John Burbank's section was very general discussion with rehashed netscape/internet analogies, removing middle men which offer nothing new. Focus is always on the transaction coins (admittedly there was more on smart contracts here) but what about other industries for blockchain: decentralized data, personal data, computing power, energy, supply chain etc?

For now, let’s start with a quick history lesson about bitcoin. Bitcoin was officially unveiled to the public in a white paper published October 31st, 2008. The white paper is actually extremely readable, very short (just 8 pages), and incredibly elegantly written. If you want to understand why bitcoin is so compelling straight from the horse’s mouth, you must read this paper. It will explain everything better than I or anyone else likely ever could.

This is a fundamentally flawed argument that can be lobbied against absolutely any new technology or invention, and fails to take into account the natural process of growth and gradual adoption over time. The exact same argument was used against the internet in its early days, and I find this article from Newsweek, published in 1995, particularly illuminating in this regard.

A cryptocurrency that aspires to become part of the mainstream financial system may have to satisfy widely divergent criteria. It would need to be mathematically complex (to avoid fraud and hacker attacks) but easy for consumers to understand; decentralized but with adequate consumer safeguards and protection; and preserve user anonymity without being a conduit for tax evasion, money laundering and other nefarious activities. Since these are formidable criteria to satisfy, is it possible that the most popular cryptocurrency in a few years’ time could have attributes that fall in between heavily-regulated fiat currencies and today’s cryptocurrencies? While that possibility looks remote, there is little doubt that as the leading cryptocurrency at present, Bitcoin’s success (or lack thereof) in dealing with the challenges it faces may determine the fortunes of other cryptocurrencies in the years ahead.

Lisk is a new altcoin, having launched on 24 May 2016. Lisk is a decentralized network with its own blockchain. It has been launched to enable developers to build a wide range of apps on the Lisk network by developing custom side chains. It has similarities to the Ethereum network, but the Lisk blockchain has not been built with the intention to create smart contracts. It has been built to develop different apps and functionalities using the Lisk App SDK framework. Furthermore, Lisk has entered into a partnership with Microsoft Azure. This means that developers worldwide can develop, test, and deploy Lisk blockchain applications using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform and infrastructure.

A fork is sort of like a stock split and happens when a complex set of conditions are met. On August 1, 2017, for example, bitcoin speculators received one unit of bitcoin cash for every bitcoin already owned. The fork occurred after a number of big players called "developers" agreed to modify the algorithm to speed transactions as trading volume grew. Today, bitcoin cash trades at around $1,100, compared to under $7,000 for bitcoin itself.
The next time I heard about bitcoin was in the fall of 2013, when it began its last truly meteoric price rise from $100 all the way up to $1200. This time around, I distinctly remembered thinking I’d missed the boat back when the price was just $100, and kicked myself for being totally wrong. I resolved to not make the same mistake again, and tried to get in before I missed out again.
At the time, however, these concerns seemed to have faded from the mainstream media’s radars. It wasn’t until May that they resurfaced full-blown following the publication of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank’s letter suggesting that the advent of Bitcoin futures and the coin’s price decline did not ‘appear to be a coincidence.’ The Fed analysists explained that the rise of crypto futures for the first time gave the ‘pessimists’ a tool to counteract the ‘optimists’ who had previously fueled the growth unimpeded. Another attestation in a similar vein has been Fundstrat’s Thomas Lee’s attribution of falling Bitcoin prices to Cboe futures’ expiration that made rounds in mid-June.